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L awrence J ournal -W orld - USA TODAY FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2017
INAUGURATION 2017
Addresses are about inspiration v CONTINUED FROM 1B
the speech by Trump advisers say he will strike the themes that propelled his presidential candidacy. Expect to hear his campaign promise to “make America great again” and the phrase “America first.” He’ll spotlight his vow to bring back well-paying manufacturing jobs to the Rust Belt and defeat the terror threat from the Islamic State. “He wants to continue to talk about issues and areas where he can unite the country, bring it together,” spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday. The most successful inaugural addresses have been less a laundry list of legislative goals — that’s the stuff of State of the Union speeches — and more about inspiration and aspiration, especially at times of division. “We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists,” Thomas Jefferson declared in the country’s first peaceful transfer of power, in 1801. During the Great Depression, in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt reassured Americans, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Even Richard Nixon, after an election in a time of race riots, war protests and political assassination, embraced conciliation in 1969. “We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another,” he said. Clearly there are limits to what even the most soaring rhetoric can achieve. Nixon ended up resigning under threat of impeachment in his second term. Abraham Lincoln called on “the better angels of our nature” in 1861, but the Civil War soon followed. In 1865 in his second inaugural address, perhaps the most eloquent one in American history, Lincoln urged a riven nation to bind up its wounds “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” That’s precisely the message Trump needs to deliver, advised Tad Devine, the top strategist for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Democratic presidential nomination last year. “What he should do is ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all,’ ” he said. “So far, he’s had malice toward everybody from John Lewis to Meryl Streep.” A spate of provocative postings on Twitter — including tweet
SHAWN THEW, EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
People protest against President-elect Donald Trump in front of the Supreme Court in Washington on Nov. 15. storms with the civil rights icon (“all talk, talk, talk, no action”) and the award-winning actress (“overrated”) — have grabbed headlines and fueled the frenetic air surrounding Trump’s transition. Thursday morning, he posted a tweet arguing he wasn’t to blame for a divided country. Trump has taken fewer steps than other presidents-elect in modern times to reach out to the Americans who didn’t vote for him, presumably one reason he has gained the approval of few of them. When he embarked on a post-election “thank you” tour, he went only to states he carried, speaking to supporters in campaign-style rallies. Unlike his recent predecessors, he didn’t reach across the aisle to name a Democratic officeholder to his Cabinet. President Obama has warned he might break with a modern precedent himself. Bush and oth-
“We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another.” Richard Nixon in his inaugural address after a tumultuous election during a time of race riots, war protests and political assassination
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Richard Nixon dedicates his new administration to the cause of “peace among nations” in his inaugural speech Jan. 20, 1969.
er recent former presidents have largely stepped away from political combat after moving out of the Oval Office. At his final White House news conference Wednesday, the outgoing president said he would speak out if he saw threats to “core values,” a term he indicated could include
establishing a Muslim registry and deporting young undocumented immigrants, the so-called DREAMers. Trump’s defenders cite his remarks on election night, after his unexpected victory, as an apt template for his inaugural address. Then, in a 15-minute speech, reading from teleprompters before a bank of American flags, Trump congratulated Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton on “a very, very hard-fought campaign” and thanked her for her service to the country. He promised to be a president for “all Republicans and Democrats and independents.” Friday, he’ll have another chance to speak to the supporters who will be massed on the National Mall to cheer him — and an unprecedented influx of demonstrators who have flocked to town to protest him.
Unemployment cut more than half under Obama v CONTINUED FROM 1B
Great Depression and departs Friday, achieved historic success. The economy has added 15.5 million jobs since employment bottomed in early 2010, and the 156,000 picked up in December marked the 75th straight month of payroll gains, an all-time record. The grand total for Obama’s two terms, after figuring in the severe job losses of 2009: 10.5 million. The unemployment rate has plunged to 4.7% from 10% in 2009. Wages are finally climbing in earnest. “He was about as good a job creator as can be expected, given the cards he was dealt,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. Besides a devastating financial crisis, those cards included a recalcitrant Republican-dominated Congress for much of his term, a weak global economy and sharp federal budget cuts. Some critics point to the dimmer side of the employment picture. The share of Americans working or looking for jobs is near historic lows. About 10 million prime-age men aren’t in the labor force — a lingering casualty of the Great Recession. Wage increases were stagnant at about 2% for most of the 71⁄2-year-old recovery. “Several million people are not earning income, not producing,” says Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. “I don’t think it’s good for the economy, and it’s not good for those people.” Mitchell at least partly blames the substantial increase in the disability and food stamp rolls during and after the recession, which he says encouraged some Americans to remain idle.
GERALD HERBERT, AP
Vice President Biden watches as President Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Feb. 17, 2009. “We’ve expanded the welfare state,” he says. Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, says such payments, along with extended unemployment insurance, provided laid-off Americans a lifeline and propped up consumer spending and the economy. Zandi says most of the decline in labor force participation can be traced to retiring Baby Boomers. Most economists say Obama’s actions during and after the 2008-09 financial crisis and recession revived a teetering economy that was losing 800,000 jobs a month when he was sworn in and left nearly 9 million unemployed. Obama spearheaded the $831 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as the economic stimulus, a sprawling package that included infrastructure spending, tax credits, state and local aid and extended unemployment benefits.
The program added nearly 3 million jobs at its peak in 2010 and cut the unemployment rate by 1.5 percentage points, according to a study in 2015 by Zandi and Princeton economist Alan Blinder. “The key to turning around the job market was the Recovery Act,” says Zandi, who also credits Federal Reserve bond purchases that lowered long-term interest rates. “We were looking into the abyss.” “I really don’t buy the numbers,” says Aparna Mathur, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. In light of the stimulus’ size, “we really didn’t see a big recovery in the labor market,” which she says took nearly eight years to return to pre-recession levels. Obama carried through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, also known as the bank bailout. It resuscitated the largest banks whose capital was depleted by the housing crash, spurring lending
and economic activity and adding 3 million or so jobs, Zandi and Blinder estimate. Although Bush signed TARP into law, Obama used the funds to significantly expand the rescue of the auto industry — a highly controversial move at the time — saving hundreds of thousands of jobs. The White House pushed jobtraining programs that better coordinated efforts among industry, community colleges and state and local officials; supplied grants and other funds for apprenticeships; and established a national public-private network to promote innovation in manufacturing, among other programs. After losing more than 2 million jobs in the recession — which accelerated a decades-long trend — manufacturers have added 822,000 jobs since early 2010. “I think (Obama) did a very good job in laying a foundation for manufacturing in America,” says Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. He says the administration could have acted earlier in taking a tough stance toward China’s currency manipulation and in challenging its dumping of products in the USA at below-market prices. Republicans branded Obama a job killer for imposing too many regulations and failing to cut corporate taxes. Often cited: the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which prompted some employers to convert full-time employees to part-time or keep full-time staff below 50 to avoid the health coverage mandate. Similarly, Mathur says, the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul restrained banks, particularly small players removed from the meltdown, curtailing growth. Zandi says that there’s little ev-
idence the health care law hurt payrolls and that it created thousands of jobs by expanding coverage to millions of Americans. Dodd-Frank, he argues, generated legal and other jobs to comply with new requirements. Corrections & Clarifications USA TODAY is committed to accuracy. To reach us, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones at 800-8727073 or e-mail accuracy@usatoday.com. Please indicate whether you’re responding to content online or in the newspaper.
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